About the miniMos transposon
The miniMos transposon is a method to carry transgenes into the C. elegans genome. The method has the advantages:
- The insertion frequency and fidelity is high
- The exact insertion site can be determined
- Large transgenes can be inserted
- The miniMos element is active in C. elegans, C. briggsae and natural isolates.
- Transgenes are expressed in the germline at high frequency.
The method works by inserting a transgene into a modified Mos1 element (miniMos). The miniMos transposon can carry the inserted transgene (together with a selection marker) into the genome. Insertions are generated directly by injecting worms and take approximately 1 week to generate. The insertion site is random and can be identified by inverse PCR on the strain.
We have released the reagents prior to publication so that other researchers can use them without having to wait. Please cite “Frøkjær-Jensen C, Davis MW, Sarov M, Taylor J, Flibotte S, LaBella M, Pozniakovski A, Moerman DG and Jorgensen EM. Random and targeted transgene insertion in C. elegans using a modified Mos1 transposon. Nature Methods. (In press)” if you manage to use the reagents in a publication before we publish the method.
The plasmids can be ordered either individually (see plasmids) or as a kit (29 plasmids – 8 co-injection vectors, 16 cloning vectors, 3 positive controls and 2 LacO vectors) from Addgene. Please see this page for information about ordering the kit. If you plan to order more than 7 plasmids it is cheaper to order the full kit. Addgene is a non-profit plasmid repository and we do not receive any compensation or commission – it is just the easiest way to distribute plasmids and saves us a lot of time dealing with shipping and MTAs.
Also, several people in the lab are in the process of developing a gene-trap system based on the miniMos transposon. Please don’t use the miniMos reagents prior to publication to compete with these efforts. We will release the gene-trap reagents as soon as possible.
Requirements
- The transgene cloned into the appropriate miniMos vector (different selection markers)
Schematic of method
